Boron Thread
by narwhalsandkurt
Summary: Science Olympiad!Klaine AU, featuring fetus Blainey days and pre-pubescent Kurt Hummel. Rated 'T' just to be safe.


**Okay so I had this idea a long time ago for a Science Olympiad!Klaine AU, and here it is! Blaine POV, like all my fics are... heh...**

**I don't know why, but I like the idea of Blainey days being a huge science nerd.**

* * *

_Chapter One_

Boron thread. The only thread they wouldn't let you use on the balsa wood helicopters.

To an idiot, it may seem ridiculous. However, if they knew anything, they'd know that boron was ridiculously heavy, and by using it, the helicopter wouldn't fly. Not only that, but you want to have the weight of the helicopter at exactly three grams (that's the least amount of weight it can be – any lighter and it's tier three for you).

You may be wondering why I've started out by talking about that. Well, this is the story of my seventh-grade year on the Westerville Middle School B-Division Science Olympiad team. It was my first year, as they wouldn't let sixth-graders join.

Normally, Mark, Andrew, Joseph, and I would slack off and play mindless computer games or check the blog, _Hyperbole and a Half_.

Now, let me tell you something about my team mates: they're _all _nerdy. They all play Pokémon and they all like Star Wars and Star Trek and most of them – including me – are serious Whovians. Most of us play Magic the Gathering, too, which is fun – I've recently started playing the card game.

I remember when we all piled in Oscar's living room and watched the _Rocky Horror Picture Show _when his parents weren't home. We all stood up and stumbled through the Time Warp, until we all collapsed into a fit of laughter.

I'd say that my days on the Science Olympiad team were the best I've ever had.

But, like all things, they have to start somewhere.

This particular part of my life started when I stumbled into homeroom on the first day of seventh-grade, and Mr. Smithson passed out papers regarding Science Olympiad. Almost everyone in the class scoffed and threw the papers in the trash – the trash can, not the recycling bin – and went back to talking about shoes, or the football try-outs taking place in just a few short weeks. I, however, placed the papers into a folder and made a mental note to take them home.

At the first meeting, I was scared to no end. There were people there I'd never met, people who'd more than likely look at my mop top and scoff in distaste – and then I saw the whole lot of them for who they really were, as people who were like me. I guess that, for me, that's the greatest part. Knowing that these people would be hypocrites for making fun of me, and they wouldn't dream of it because they liked me too much.

Well, that and if I left, helicopters would be _screwed_. Just saying.

But it definitely wasn't like that in the beginning. No, it was more like, "Hey, Blaine, here's a string of rubber and some 'O'-rings! Tie them together, wind them up, and somehow get them onto this supposed helicopter!" Needless to say, it was difficult and challenging.

Half of the newcomers left after the first two practices, but I stayed. Why, I don't know. I guess I had decided that I was going to stick with it, because I knew if I did, I'd have some bit "life skills", like team work and how to cope with displaying our beautiful creations in front of supposedly unbiased judges from competing schools.

But, as I said, it had to start somewhere, so I say it started with the coach coming up to be and shaking my hand.

"Hello, I'm Jeff, I'm the coach for the Science Olympiad team!" he said cheerfully. To be honest, he kind looked like the original Captain Kirk from _Star Trek_. "And you are…?"

"Blaine Anderson," I told him. "Seventh grade, all that…"

"Do you have any special interests?" he asked.

"Um… well, mechanics, for one thing," I said. "Diseases are cool… and, um… well, stars are kind of, erm… _awesome_, using the real definition."

Jeff smiled. "Well, there are lots of mechanical events – Mousetrap Vehicles, Helicopters, EXD… and you'll definitely want to join Disease Detectives and Reach for the Stars!"

"Helicopters? That sounds cool. So does Mousetrap…"

"Should I add you to those lists?"

"Yeah, and for Disease Detectives and Reach…"

"Great! Disease always has trouble getting members."

"I wonder why…"

Jeff grinned. "Oh, a sarcastic one… always fun to work with!"

I nodded and Jeff showed me where I needed to be. I met Ryan in the back with the computers.

"Hello, humanoid," he said. "My name on earth is Mark. What is yours?"

"Blaine," I replied. "Humanoid…?"

"Oh, don't worry," a boy from the opposite table said. "He's been saying that ever since he started watching _Doctor Who_."

"Oh, I love _Doctor Who_!" another boy cried.

"Joseph, by the way," said the boy from the other table.

"And I'm Andrew!" the other boy squeaked. He clearly hadn't hit puberty yet.

"I'm Blaine," I said.

"My human name is Mark. It is nice to meet you both, Blaine and Andrew," Ryan said.

"Yes, it was nice to meet you two as well," Joseph said.

"Yes, yes, it was," Andrew said.

"… Conversation terminated." Mark said in a monotonous tone.

"Exterminate!" Andrew screamed like a dalek.

"Delete!" Joseph said like a cyberman.

"Where's my sonic screwdriver?" I cried.

That was the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

* * *

At the second Science Olympiad meeting, Mark, Joseph, Andrew, and I took up the back table of computers, pouring over website after website of both facts and mindless crap that wouldn't help us at all unless we were tested on internet memes (as far as we knew, that was _not _one of the events). Page after page of diseases and Spidey memes were scoured before we had created fourteen entire Google document pages dedicated to Spiderman getting diseases and saying weird-ass shit to small children.

"So, for this next one, let's say Spiderman gets gonorrhea," Mark said in his slightly-monotonous way, "and then little Jimmy here touches his nips."

We all started laughing (like any normal 12-year-old boy would in that situation), and kept laughing until some ninth-grader named Sarah told us "Shut up and get working."

That is _not _what we did.

Obviously not, we were twelve-year-old boys with access to the internet. What more were we to do?

I grew tired of making up scenarios involving Spidey, diseases, and children, so I pulled up a wiki page on how stars burn "fuel" and started power-reading. My pre-pubescent mind was struggling to comprehend all the new information, and I had to read through it several times before it clicked that the damned things burn hydrogen and then burn helium when all the hydrogen runs out.

In the time it had taken me to understand the new concept, my friends had typed up another five pages. In a way, we _were _studying – it was just a tad unconventional.

"Get this: Spidey contracts malaria from a contaminated water-source, and it turns out that Sally Jane in apartment 501 was the one who contaminated it," I chimed in. Andrew laughed and began typing, his tiny fingers flying across the keyboard.

That was the last one typed that night, so I added a line underneath and dated the twenty we had done. I, of course, assumed we were going to come up with more scenarios as there were a shit ton of diseases in the world and plenty of children's names to use to give Spidey the diseases in some bizarre way.

* * *

The next day at school, we discovered we had been in the same lunch period all this time. Of course, we began sitting by each other in a little band of losers. This was how I first met Oscar.

Oscar was also on the Science Olympiad team – he was our entomology guy. Andrew was the medical guy, Joseph was the epidemiology guy, and I was the engineering guy.

Together, we made the group of super-smart losers who were also those assholes who looked down at people who didn't enjoy STEM subjects.

Seventh grade was a different time.

"We should make a name for ourselves," Oscar said through bites of a cheeseburger one day. "Like a club, or something."

"That's fucking stupid, Oscar," Andrew joked. "Hey guys, we should make a name for ourselves. Like a club, or something."

"Very funny, jackass."

The typical reaction from Oscar whenever someone used him as a joke. Which, incidentally, was why he always _was_ the butt of our jokes.

"Yeah, I think so," Joseph agreed.

"Positive vote, humanoid," Mark deadpanned. I noticed his eyes looked especially vacant that day. He was getting better at his act.

"Why not?" I said after a swig of milk.

"So we gotta get ourselves a name, eh?" Joseph gave us all the crazy eyes and grinned. "What if we called ourselves a cult?"

"That's fucking stupid," Oscar pointed out.

"Shut up, Oscar," Andrew squeaked. His voice cracked on the end of "Oscar" – was he hitting puberty?

Oscar let out an exasperated and looked to me for help. A stupid decision, really. I only shook my head and shrugged, making him even more frustrated.

"We should totally be a cult," I said.

The rest of the boys, excluding Oscar, agreed.

"Okay, so, we're a cult," Joseph talked with his hands a lot. All his words were highly animated, making him an interesting person to talk to. That, and he downs packages of Sweet n' Low just so he can bounce off the walls and drive everybody else crazy.

And, _man_, does he succeed.

* * *

We had gotten a couple weeks into meets when Jeff came around with order forms for team t-shirts came around. There was the option to add a name on the back of the shirt, so the cult's decision?

Everyone is a superhero.

I won the battle to put "Spidey" on my shirt – Joseph was Iron Man, Andrew was Captain America, Mark was Hawkeye, and Oscar… well, Oscar was Ant Man.

"Why do I get the lame one?" He complained.

"Because _you're _the lame one," Joseph retaliated.

The two bickered about it for a few more minutes until they burnt out and dropped it.

That's how it always was with those two, bickering about something like an old married couple before dropping the subject.

Like an old married couple...

I made a mental note to expand on that later.

* * *

I followed through on that mental note and wrote out everything that made them like an old married and handed it to them at lunch the next day. Joseph did his crazy laugh while Oscar stood there, fuming.

Oscar wasn't the kind of guy to take anything lightly.

What a fucking killjoy.

Mark and Andrew spent the period laughing at Joseph and Oscar while I ate silently, observing them.

* * *

Days and weeks went on, and I continued to study tediously for my events. Just when I thought I had the material down and went to take a practice test, I'd be stumped by a curveball question and go right back to the proverbial drawing board. While my coaches admired my dedication and the amount of effort I put in, I could tell they were disappointed with the menial results.

"Hey, cheer up man," Joseph said when I told him about the trouble I was having. "We've still got about two months before competitions start, so we've got some time. And if you can't memorize the stuff, act like you're going to teach it to someone else. Trust me, it works, I've been doing it for years."

"Studies show that if you pretend you'll be teaching the material to someone else, you'll retain it better," Andrew chimed in. "Also, you memorize songs better because of the rhythm and lyrical patterns and such. So, if you were to set your course material to music, it'll be easier to remember."

"Does anyone else remember that 'Mean, Median, Mode, and Range' song from math class?" Oscar leaned back in his chair to talk to us.

"Only the chorus," Mark added. "Nobody can remember anything besides the chorus. Proven fact."

"I challenge that fact," Andrew whipped his head around to face Mark. After a few moments of silence, he began to rap. The whole damn song.

And, once again, we only remembered the chorus.

"I take that back," Mark said. "_Humans _can't remember anything besides the chorus."

The ninth graders came around to our side of the library to chastise us for not working, but Andrew (being the smart one) got out a pen and a pad of paper and had begun to write to song to help me memorize everything.

"Alex, we're helping our friend Blaine here memorize some terms for Disease Detectives. Now please, go back to work and let us brainstorm."

"C'mon, Andrew, how's a _song_ gonna help him learn?"

"Remember the song from math class?"

The ninth grader, who was apparently named Alex, rolled his eyes and went back to his side of the library.

"How do you know him?" I asked, looking down at Andrew. Damn, he was short.

"That would be my brother," he answered. "Be careful, he's a bit of an asshole."

"That's an understatement," Joseph laughed. "He's also fucking stupid, so he doesn't matter."

I burst out laughing. I was always concerned about how my friends treated anyone with an IQ under 110. It was never quite fair, especially considering a person could be smart in any number of ways – not just academically.

It was pointless to argue, though, so I never did.

* * *

**So, yeah. In the next chapter, they'll meet kids from the McKinley Junior High team and such.**


End file.
